Regarding the Western Balkans in particular, it’s early to make a decision regarding their final integration. Issues such as widespread corruption and organized crime structures that penetrate the highest echelons of local power simply do not conform with the EU norms and rules. Unless these issue are addressed via the complete wipe out in political and social terms of those disruptive criminal elements, no EU succession would be positive and would just migrate the problem to other EU states. Hopefully, in the coming years, these issues will be addressed thoroughly.

We recently interviewed Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, and asked him about the threat from criminal gangs in Europe – including from the Western Balkans. What developments has he been noticing?

One thing we’ve been seeing is increased mobility. We have seen organised crime groups, including from the Balkans, whose trademark enterprise is to be active in many member-states. In some cases, the same group will literally travel across Europe at an alarming rate. We’ve got this difficulty of tracking these highly flexible, entrepreneurial but highly mobile groups. I would say [law enforcement] haven’t yet got the same fleetness of foot. We’ve probably got enough of a framework after a decade of legislative building, but the point is the police authorities around the EU are not using that framework.

What we’ve seen over the last several years is a rapidly evolving criminal culture. We don’t see these large hierarchical organisations as much; they do still exist in places like Italy, but today you see very enterprising criminals who work much more across ethnic barriers, deliberately making it a blurry landscape and harder to track.

Might this suggest that, contrary to our readers’ argument, criminal gangs are able to cross borders and evade detection whether the Western Balkans are part of the EU or not? It also suggests that criminals are quick to cross not just physical borders, but also ethnic and national barriers as well. It’s like a demented black-market mirror of “pan-European harmony”.

But how is the Eurozone crisis affecting these developments? We’re in a situation where a lot of people are frustrated and angry with the political process. As Christos, one of our commenters, has argued:

How can you expect [people] to support the euro or EU when it is them who must pay the price and all they see is their leaders bowing to the banks and the corporate multinationals? Haven’t you noticed that they are taking to the streets protesting?

The vast majority of these protests have been peaceful, but is there a threat that unless the Eurozone crisis is resolved soon it could lead to rioting and violence? And how are criminals exploiting this?

We do see some evidence of the way [criminals are choosing] to exploit people’s misery. There’s been a greater supply of cheap counterfeit goods, for example. What we’ve also noticed, which we think is partly connected to the financial crisis, is an increase in violent extremist and anarchist groups; particularly on the left wing. The scale of that activity has notably increased in the last two or three years. We feel that anarchists have deliberately exploited the situation.

What do YOU think? Is the Eurozone crisis increasing the threat of violence and criminality in Europe? Has the borderless nature of the EU made it too easy for criminals to operate? Or are criminals simply faster than the law at exploiting a globalising world? Let us know your thoughts in the form below, and we’ll take them to policy-makers and experts for their reactions.

Vote 2014

Voting is closed in our Debating Europe Vote 2014! The results are now in, so come and see what our readers thought!

It is in nature of criminals to exploit weaknesses and the current disarray at government and financial levels allows them to penetrate even deeper. As crippled governments currently focus mainly on tackling financial issues, not much attention is left for crime.
In my opinion, borderless Europe is not main factor for increasing criminal activity. If we are discussing about transnational criminal groups operating in more than one states we have to agree that this situation can only be resolved with bigger cooperation.

With more integration and cooperation I am confident that criminal activities can be eradicated from all of the states. If we leave this matter to individual states, I am sure they would not be able to tackle this problem alone.

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